Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Hindsight Biases

Hindsight Biases

Hindsight bias leads you to believe that the event you just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t. In other words, you knew all along that things would turn out the way they did. Can you relate this to the phrase "Hindsight is 20/20" now?

False Memories

False Memories

False memories represent a cognitive distortion in which individuals recall events that did not happen, or remember them in an altered form. This phenomenon highlights the brain's constructive nature in processing and recalling memories, emphasizing that memory is not a perfect representation of past events but rather a dynamic reconstruction influenced by various factors.
One primary source of false memories is misattribution, where individuals incorrectly associate external information...

Fundamental Attribution Error

Fundamental Attribution Error

According to some social psychologists, people tend to overemphasize internal factors as explanations—or attributions—for the behavior of other people. They tend to assume that the behavior of another person is a trait of that person, and to underestimate the power of the situation on the behavior of others. They tend to fail to recognize when the behavior of another is due to situational variables, and thus to the person’s state. This erroneous assumption is...

Experimental Designs

Experimental Designs

An experimental design is a systematic process that allows researchers to evaluate the relationship between dependent and independent variables. There are three widely used types of experimental design - pre-experimental design, true experimental design, and quasi-experimental design. In pre-experimental design, the researcher compares the data before and after some interventions or treatments. The true-experimental design has more than one purposefully created group, a commonly measured...

First Impression

First Impression

First impressions play a crucial role in social perception, shaping how individuals assess others in professional, academic, and interpersonal contexts. Psychological research highlights the significance of cognitive biases, such as the primacy and recency effects, which influence how people interpret and recall information.The Primacy Effect and Cognitive AnchoringThe primacy effect describes the tendency for initial information to impact judgment disproportionately. When individuals encounter...

Cause and Effect

Cause and Effect

While variables are sometimes correlated because one does cause the other, it could also be that some other factor, a confounding variable, is actually causing the systematic movement in our variables of interest. For instance, as sales in ice cream increase, so does the overall rate of crime. Is it possible that indulging in your favorite flavor of ice cream could send you on a crime spree? Or, after committing crime do you think you might decide to treat yourself to a cone?

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same journal

Trap tales: The influence of red alder stand conditions and forest fragmentation on family-level beetle bycatch diversity.

PloS one·2026

Same journal

MamNet-PT: A Mamba-enhanced hybrid architecture with selective state-space modeling for uncertainty-aware brain tumor segmentation.

PloS one·2026

Same journal

Multicenter evaluation of BACT-Info. and an infection algorithm using Urine Flow Cytometry among clinically diagnosed UTI patients in Indonesia.

PloS one·2026

Same journal

Cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric properties study of Prolonged Grief Disorder Questionnaire (PG-12-R) for caregivers of terminal cancer patients, Thai version.

PloS one·2026

Same journal

Design and in silico validation of donor DNA for RNA-guided recombinase-mediated knockout of mstnb gene in Labeo rohita.

PloS one·2026

Same journal

ViT-MultiRAGNet: A scalable and reliable retrieval-augmented Vision Transformer framework for memory-guided feature fusion multi-modal mammogram classification.

PloS one·2026

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 8, 2026

Online Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of Dorsomedial and Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Cognition Decision Making, and Cognitive Dissonance

Online Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of Dorsomedial and Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Cognition Decision Making, and Cognitive Dissonance

Published on: December 5, 2025

Search, Memory, and Choice Error: An Experiment.

Adam Sanjurjo¹

¹Fundamentos del Análisis Económico, Universidad de Alicante, Alicante, Spain.

|June 30, 2015

Summary

Cognitive limitations impact choices in complex decisions. New research shows that the order information is presented significantly reduces choice errors by managing memory load.

Area of Science:

Behavioral Economics
Cognitive Science
Decision Making

Background:

Economic decisions often involve multiple attributes beyond price or wage.
Cognitive limitations, such as memory load, can influence complex choices.
Existing models often overlook the impact of information acquisition order.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how cognitive limitations, specifically memory load, affect choice behavior in multi-attribute search settings.
To test predictions from a new model of search memory load.
To understand how information order influences choice errors.

Main Methods:

An experiment was conducted where subjects searched identical information presented in two different orders, varying in predicted memory load.

More Related Videos

T-maze Forced Alternation and Left-right Discrimination Tasks for Assessing Working and Reference Memory in Mice

T-maze Forced Alternation and Left-right Discrimination Tasks for Assessing Working and Reference Memory in Mice

Published on: February 26, 2012

Errors as a Means of Reducing Impulsive Food Choice

Errors as a Means of Reducing Impulsive Food Choice

Published on: June 5, 2016

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Apr 8, 2026

Online Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of Dorsomedial and Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Cognition Decision Making, and Cognitive Dissonance

Online Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of Dorsomedial and Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Cognition Decision Making, and Cognitive Dissonance

Published on: December 5, 2025

T-maze Forced Alternation and Left-right Discrimination Tasks for Assessing Working and Reference Memory in Mice

T-maze Forced Alternation and Left-right Discrimination Tasks for Assessing Working and Reference Memory in Mice

Published on: February 26, 2012

Errors as a Means of Reducing Impulsive Food Choice

Errors as a Means of Reducing Impulsive Food Choice

Published on: June 5, 2016

Subjects' choice errors were recorded for each search order.

Cognitive load was induced endogenously within the task.

Main Results:

Search orders with lower predicted memory load led to significantly fewer choice errors.
Deviations from optimal search paths by limited memory searchers were observed and explained by memory load management.
Information order, not just quantity, was found to be a critical factor in choice failure.

Conclusions:

Managing memory load through strategic information ordering can reduce choice errors in complex decisions.
Limited memory searchers systematically deviate from optimal search strategies to minimize cognitive load.
This study contributes to understanding cognitive load, cognitive ability, and information overload literature by highlighting the importance of information presentation order.